PNY 32GB Attaché USB 2.0 Flash Drive

Yesterday I looked at the PNY 16GB Attaché USB 2.0 Flash Drive, so today I figured I would check out the 32gb version. Not much of an introduction is needed here as it’s basically the same drive, but I’ve run it though my tests and compared it to the 16gb Attaché and some other drives, so read on to learn how it did.

The packaging for the PNY 32gb Attaché is the same as the 16gb version with just a few minor differences, like the capacity. It is the plastic clamshell style package, and we can see the drive through the front, and of course there are specs and features listed as well.

The 32gb Attaché is made of plastic with green accents on it, the cap is removable of course. I didn’t mention it in the 16gb review, but the cap is fairly hard to get off, but this is a good thing so you are less likely to lose it.

The 32gb PNY Attaché does feature an activity LED in it, it’s blue in color, the 16gb did not have an LED in it.

The same drives were used for the comparison, and the same tests were run. The drives are the OCZ Rally2 4gb, Corsair Flash Voyager mini 4gb, Sandisk Cruzer Enterprise 2gb and a Super Talent drive, as well as the PNY 16gb Attaché.

It looks as though overall the 32gb version of the Attaché scores a bit lower than the 16gb version.

Here’s a look at the 256MB Files Test:

As we can see the 32gb Attaché Read Performance is a bit slower than the 16gb, making this one of the slowest drives in the comparison.

Next up is DiskBench and the times it takes to Copy To, Copy From and Read From the USB drives, I used a 350MB .AVI video file for all tests.

The first graph is the times in seconds so lower is better, meaning a shorter time to do the task. I used the Write Performance or Copy To as the reference point of the graph.

As you can see the 32gb Attaché is about 1 second slower at writing the file, but quite a bit slower for the other tests, than the 16gb Attaché.

Here’s the transfer rates for the test:

Here we can really see why things were slower all around, it’s the actual transfer rates that we got while doing the tests, a bit slow.

Here a again though the other drives in this test are some of the fastest out there today, and they’re hard to beat.

The average price of the 32gb Attaché is about $62, while the 32gb version runs about $40, so for the price really it’s only about $20 more to double the storage capacity, and the cost per gigabyte is lower as well, making the 32gb version the better choice overall really, at least in the cost to gigabyte ratio.

Conclusion: When compared to other drives it seems the PNY 32GB Attaché USB 2.0 Flash Drive is a bit slow, but the drives I’ve compared it to are some of the fastest out there today so it’s fairly hard to beat them.

All in all though the cost per gigabyte is fairly cheap, and if you’re looking for a large capacity USB drive then this just might fit your needs. Over the next few days I’ll be adding more and more USB large capacity USB drives to the charts so we’ll see where theses drives really stand when more of the same capacities are tested against them.

Can you also run a comparison of 32gb drives against each other. Your test here is meaningless unless you are comparing apples to apples (32g to 32g). thanks.

Ira Green

I’ve been digging for a little while. PNY doesn’t seem to have a page where you can enter the serial number and check it for authenticity after you buy it. There’s a full registration page, but that doesn’t allow for an instant check and you actually have to go through a full registration there. I was hoping for something like Kingston does with it’s verify page to root out fakes, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Did you find differently from PNY?

rob

These are not good flash drives, I purchased an 8G a couple years ago. All the flash drive will store is 50MB. Complete waste of money!

Micawbr

PNY is best in my book because it’s slimmer. The Sandisk and Kingston are bulky by comparison which makes them difficult to wedge into a slot between IEEE cable and power cord on my laptop. Sandisk also rattles when it’s in my pocket. Sure, PNY has the cap to deal with, but it’s a secure click on and off.

Retiredguru

Totally unfair and meaningless speed and performance comparisions when the others are 2 and 4 gb drives.